Before we get into it: this Thursday I’m hosting The Work Pause, an hour of guided writing for leaders who want to take honest stock before the end-of-the-year craziness descends. Use code SEPTEMBER to register for free, but you have to promise to come if you take a spot.
I have given far more apologies at work than I have ever received. Most of them were habitual and reflexive; they fell out of my mouth before I’d even really thought through whether what happened was actually my fault.
I have apologized for taking up airtime in meetings I was invited to. I have apologized to someone for interrupting me, for having the audacity to reclaim my time. I have apologized for disagreeing with bad ideas. At some point, it became almost a verbal tic to soften what I was saying and make it more palatable. And I know a lot of people are like me, which is why we frequently tell women to stop apologizing.
One apology I actually received has stayed with me for years.
I was working with someone who was fucking toxic. I keep wanting to call him a bully, but in retrospect, he wasn’t senior to me, so he had no real power over me. I think in order to be a bully, you have to have some bite behind your bark. In fact, I was senior to him, but he was in another department and didn’t report to me.
This guy talked shit behind everyone’s back. He told his team I’d said things about them that I hadn’t. He undermined my efforts with poor execution when he was involved in my projects. He sowed seeds of doubt about my motives with our founder. He called my peers on evenings and weekends to complain about how I’d treated him that day. All the while, he was friendly to my face. It was incredibly destabilizing.
The founder watched it go on for a long time. This work nemesis was genuinely valuable to the company's operations, and I think the founder couldn’t see how we’d get the work done without him. In retrospect, this co-worker was probably also manipulating the founder in ways neither of us saw at the time.
I believe the founder genuinely did not know what to do, so he did nothing. And sometimes doing nothing is the worst insult of all and the laziest leadership decision.
As the situation was finally winding down (I was quitting, the staff was in shambles, and the founder was thinking about the path forward), he asked me to meet. And he apologized.
It wasn’t an HR-approved “management” apology: “I’m sorry you didn’t feel supported.” “Mistakes were made.” “What happened was unfortunate.”
No. He gave me a REAL fucking apology. He named what he had failed to do, and he didn't reach for a single excuse. It was too late, but it was still incredibly meaningful to me because it required him to ackowledge his own poor judgment, out loud, while I watched, without trying to deny anything. He earned my respect in that moment.
I’ve been thinking about that apology lately because I keep hearing a piece of judgment and advice I’ve come to view with suspicion. You’ve heard it too:
Women apologize too much at work. Stop saying sorry.
I have clearly needed that advice at different times in my career. See above.
But I’ve noticed that we like to tell women to STOP doing something that can be an effective inter-relational lubricant instead of telling then how to do it effectively and teaching men to START doing it.
“Stop apologizing” does exactly what it claims to fight. It polices how we take up space. It asks the person who over-functions to make herself smaller, and it never once turns to the people who never apologize at all and asks them to grow.
The problems (in my humble opinion) are two-fold:
We don’t teach professional people (especially women and marginalized groups) when to give an apology and when not to. We just say “never apologize!”
Almost no one knows how to give or receive a apology effectively.
When is an apology warranted?
Apologize when you’ve caused harm, broken something you were responsible for, or let someone down in a way that is genuinely on you.
When that’s the situation, apologize! Do it well (see below). I would argue that a tiny fraction of leaders apologize when they should. They worry it makes them look weak or that they’ll get the heat for a failure.
On the other hand, a lot of what gets diagnosed as over-apologizing isn't apology at all. It’s absorbing blame that isn’t yours; it’s smoothing a moment because someone else is uncomfortable and you’re the self-appointed fixer of uncomfortable feelings.
An apology can also occasionally be manipulative, either intentionally or unintentionally. When someone over-apologizes so intensely that the offended has to take care of the offender and make them feel better, I would argue that’s not real repair. It’s a strategy to avoid accountability rather than accepting it.
The manipulative apology and the reflexive one are the same move, just pointed in opposite directions. Both use “sorry” to do something other than fix what's broken. One is buying its way out of a mess. The other is trying to disappear. That’s why I think “stop apologizing” is such lazy advice. It doesn’t distinguish between someone erasing herself and someone who genuinely has made a mistake they need to own.
How to give a real apology
Accept responsibility. No qualifiers, no "I'm sorry if," no "I'm sorry you felt that way." These are grammar tricks that relocate the problem into the other person's feelings. What matters isn't your intent. It's the impact. So instead of "I'm sorry you feel your work wasn't recognized," you say, "I'm sorry I presented your analysis as mine in the leadership review." Instead of "I'm sorry if it seemed like I was pointing fingers on that call," you say, "I'm sorry I put the miss on you in front of the client when the call was mine." And instead of "I'm sorry you felt out of the loop," you say, "I'm sorry I reassigned your project without talking to you first."
Make amends. There are two kinds. Direct amends are the repair itself: the correction, the credit you failed to give, the follow-through you promised. Living amends are the infinitely harder version: the commitment to not do it again, kept over time rather than announced. Words without change are just theater. Change with no acknowledgment leaves the person still wondering if they imagined the whole thing.
Don’t make it about you. Over-apologizing is not extra humility, however much that may be your intent. It pulls the focus back onto your own guilt until the person you hurt ends up comforting you for having hurt them. We’ve allllll been on the receiving end of this, and many of us have been on the giving end. If you’re apologizing so hard that they have to reassure you, you’re asking them to manage your remorse. And that, my dearies, is not an apology.
Never use it as a tool. Don’t use an apology to manipulate someone into dropping a grievance, to smooth over a mess you didn’t create, or to make someone like you. An apology offered with an ulterior motive is not an apology. Most people can feel the difference even when they can’t exactly put their finger on it.
How to receive an apology
Receiving an apology well is its own discipline, and we talk about it even less.
Say “thank you” instead of “it’s okay.” Often it wasn't okay, and saying that it was is lying to make the moment less awkward for everyone. “Thank you” honors that the other person did something hard (apologize) without pretending the harm didn’t happen. Accepting an apology without minimizing it is an important practice.
You can accept it and still set a boundary. These are not opposites. “Thank you for saying that. I also need us to handle it differently next time.” Accepting an apology is not the same as agreeing that everything was fine.
If you say you’ll let it go, let it go. And if you’re not ready to, it’s completely fair to say you need some time. Performing forgiveness now and resenting it later doesn’t help anybody.
No gunny-sacking. Don’t nod along, say it’s fine, and then quietly drop the grievance into a sack you plan to empty over their head six months later during a fight about something else entirely. If you accepted the apology, it’s closed. If you can’t close it, say so now.
The questions I’d leave you with aren’t about whether you apologize too much.
When was the last time you gave a real apology that actually cost you something?
When someone apologizes to you, do you say thank you, or do you rush to “it’s okay” so everyone can stop feeling uncomfortable?
Is there a gunny sack somewhere with someone’s name on it that you’ve been telling yourself you already let go?
I work one-on-one with founders, senior leaders, and executives in GTM roles to help them clarify what they actually want and what to do about it.
If that sounds useful, schedule some time to talk, and we’ll figure out if we’re a fit.